Jackson County District Judge R. Darryl Mazur arraigned Jeffery Salyers, 52, on Tuesday, April 15. In addition to the child abuse offense, he is accused of three misdemeanors: failing to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in injury, drunken driving with an occupant younger than 16, and assault and battery. Mazur set his bond at $10,000.

The most serious of the offenses, the child abuse crime, is punishable by a maximum prison term of two years.

Salyers, who police reported was intoxicated, went Sunday evening to a man’s home on Lansing Avenue in Blackman Township, the 65-year-old man and his 34-year-old neighbor said. Salyers was looking for scrap metal or money and when the older man refused, Salyers went quickly down the driveway, fishtailing, the men said.

The 65-year-old called 911 and Salyers lost control and hit some trees, the Blackman-Leoni Township public safety department reported. An angry Salyers allegedly punched and pushed down the older man, who had come outside.

After the impact, the 3-year-old got out of the GMC Jimmy. He was bleeding and screaming and Salyers fetched the boy, the 34-year-old said. Police reported he tossed him through a broken window into the SUV.

The boy had a cut on his forehead. Jackson Community Ambulance personnel treated him and he was placed in the custody of Children’s Protective Services. The older man had cuts to his face and elbow and a sore shoulder, according to a statement from the public safety department. His neighbor had to drag him from the driveway because he was concerned Salyers would run over him with the Jimmy.

Officers from the Blackman-Leoni Township public safety department caught Salyers before he fled far from the house.

He went to the Jackson County Jail, where he would not cooperate with the booking procedure, and officers tried to put him in a cell, county Undersheriff Chris Kuhl said.

Salyers was belligerent, unruly and combative. He would not follow commands and he had to be subdued with a chemical irritant, Kuhl said.

The shiny substance appearing on his face in his booking photograph is used to de-contaminate or neutralize the effects of the chemical spray, the undersheriff said.